How can I increase my CTR without increasing the bid amount

I advertise my employment search website worldwide and have about 8 ad groups with exact keywords, broad phrases, and I also try to target about 5 countries individually. The QS is anywhere from 6/10 to 8/10. I get a lot of impressions but my CTR is between 0.12% to 0.8%. Most clicks come from the search, not content network.

I can only afford 0.03 per click. What can be done to increase my CTR without increasing the bid?

 

0.12% to 0.8% is only for the search network right?
If that's the case then you should try being more specific and rewrite your ad texts. It also depends on the competition.

 

If you want to increase CTR, you have to create better ads. Simple as that. Doesn't matter your position or what you pay. Google takes position into account to calculate your QS. QS is also closely related to CTR. Since you have some keywords with QS of 8, you are among the top 20% of advertisers for them. Again, Google normalizes by position so your CTR is among the best at that position.

Unless you have a really super great ad, don't expect your CTR to go from 0.8% to 3%, or even 2%, at that same position. So if you want your absolute CTR to go up, you will have to create better ads. Of course, increasing your bid to move up in position will also do it but also try to have better ads.

I think you are doing a good thing to have campaigns target specific countries. Don't use broad matches such as your use of "net" you talk about in another thread. Use phrase and exact as much as possible. Be as specific as possible. That may be another reason of low CTR, you are being too general with your keywords. Best to have less impressions generating more targeted clicks than lots more impressions which gets you the same amount of clicks.

 

Thank you. This is very informative. Just today I've noticed that one of my exact matches ad group has started performing much better than other groups. So, I will see what will happen in the days to come, maybe I will emphasize exact matches if they will be working much better.

And no, I am not using the "net" anymore. I was just playing with it to see what would happen.

Here's an example of some of my ads:

Jobs - Worldwide
Find new job listings in your area
and anywhere in the world.

-------------------

Job Search - Worldwide
Find any job.
Anywhere.

-------------------
Find a New Job
Search for new jobs locally
and anywhere in the world.


What improvements should I make to make those and other ads more efficient?

Again, thank you for the help!

 

work on your ads and or work on getting your qs up

 

foreverhired- I would test some other versions of that creative. The 3 versions you posted look ok, but pretty similar. I often try asking a question in my description field..ex: Looking for a Job?..or 'Tired of your old job?. something like that has the potential to attract users who are in the early stages of job hunting. Of course, like anyone else here can attest to, it
's all about testing. Best to make single variable tests at first(like changing ad copy, or adding a certain keyword to ad copy) vs doing multi-variate testing(like changing ad copy AND landing page simulatenously), so you can isolate your changes and see what has the greatest impact on your ads.

 

also - are you using google search or google content network?

 

Testing different ad copy is a must. Try using Dynamic Insertion in your ad copy to increase the CTR. Make sure you spit the impressions equally (Show Ads Equally) and when comparing ads make sure they have run for the same time period before deciding which one to remove.

If I were you I would run several Search Query Reports and see which searches are triggering your ads, and then weed out queries which are not relevant to the service by adding them as negatives. You should be really careful with negatives and their match type though because it could prevent you ads to appear. Normally I do a Ad Check with the AdWords tools to see if my keywords are not showing for some reason.

Same thing if you use the Content network. Run a report (Placement Report if I am not mistaken) where your ads are showing and remove low performing sites by adding them as negatives again. I usually remove Video sharing sites as the CTR there is really low and it has lots of impression and doesn't usually work for me. But you should check that yourself.

 

Search. Well, mostly search. Most of my campaigns have exact matches, so naturally I get more clicks from the search. I prefer the search, because then I know that people who come to the site are interested in finding a job.

 

Like your suggestions. Will test them definitely.

 

Your ads feel ho-hum to me. I'm not looking but I bet you others using your keywords have similar kinds of ads. Your ad should answer the question "what's in it for me?" to have high click rates.

Also, are you bidding only the keyword "job" or "jobs"? You should bid on specific types of jobs like "programming jobs", and even more specific like "c++ programming jobs". Ads should match too and landing page to the specific job. Go longer tail with "part time dish washing jobs in mycity" or whatever the job is and the city. I know it's a lot of work, especially if you have hundreds of jobs on the site, but worth it with what should be good conversion rates. I should know. I manage a client's campaign with a job site in a specific health field.

 

I know some of the ads did look dull. I tried to rewrite some of them this afternoon.

As far as the keywords, I have over 200 of them for each ad group. Similar to the ones you mentioned about.

I am expecting a better day tomorrow with all the new ads, keywords and a better QS.

 

You should be splitting down your account a lot more - over 200 KWs in any ad group is far too many. If you split them down into more ad groups you'll be able to write more targeted ads for each KW - thereby increasing your CTR and QS.

If it's proving a bit tricky to break them down or it's to time consuming then try exporting your account to Adwords Editor and then use the Keyword Grouper tool. It's not as good as doing them yourself but it provides a very useful starting point if you're not used to doing this.

(However, some people have posted on here it's essential to only have one KW per ad group - this is total overkill in my opinion, I have plenty of ad groups with 30 KWs in all of which have QS 10 - all the KWs are HIGHLY related)

 

Create a separate good quality landing page for each keyword.

 

JHardy said:
> However, some people have posted on here it's essential to only have one KW per ad group - this is total overkill in my opinion

I agree with this.

You also don't need to create a landing page for each keyword as the next message suggests. That too is overkill and I suspect in your case, you'd never be finished.

 

You should think about advertising somewhere else besides Google which allows you to run your exact ads. A higher clickthrough ratio is not necessarily in your best interest. Maybe they are not qualified buyers. Google wants as many clicks as possible but you want as many qualified clicks as possible. I have spent about $5000. per month on Adwords and now I am fed up with their bullying. Most of my traffic came from content. This means advertising with Yahoo might be even better because they have busier content type traffic. Search traffic is overated. My $5000. per month can buy a lot of marketers working for me in Bangaladesh. Time to think out of the box.

 

Freeleads2 - just read a few of your posts - honestly, you're talking a bit of nonsense mate. Your traffic will be rubbish (in general) if it comes from the content network - you need to concentrate on search.

From your other posts though this is a bit difficult because you're an affiliate who keeps getting a QS of 1 - this is something you're not happy about. Google did this and are clamping down a lot more on this for a very good reason - to stop their sponsored links being inundated with low quality affiliate sites all offering exactly the same products and content. I can't think of a better way to switch customers off using the sponsored links than if they didn't act - less customers using them means less business for google and for its business users in general.

People ain't gonna be happy when they read this but I say "Go on Google! Keep going!".

(Just to put your mind at rest about Google being 'evil' - adsense affiliates have been hardest hit of all, if Google were 'evil', they'd be the last to be hit as they generate even more revenue for Google)

 

I had read that your Google keyword should also be part of your ad. The more Google keywords in your ad the better in order to get the most impressions and clicks. Does this make sense to the team?

 

After reading Freeleads2's last post, I must say I agree with JHardy. Lots of nonsense.

1. Google will run your ads. It's just that they may charge more if the quality is not there.

2. Higher click rate IS in your best interest. This will be achieved with the proper keyword-ad-page relevancy and an ad that makes people click on it with an offer they can't refuse. That's the only way you will get quality traffic. Closing the sale is up to your page. You can have high CTR and still lose (poor ROI, profits, whatever you want to call it) because your offer is poor.

By the way, $5000 can buy you ME and make that campaign profitable. I'm not sure about all those Bangledesh marketers. Actually, won't cost you nearly that much.

Starrman14, yes, you should have your keyword as part of the ad. You bid on "dog food", you wouldn't have your ad say "cat food" or not mention it at all. Makes perfect sense doesn't it?

 

Yeah, so shut it Freelads2